I’m just a traditional print journo who is a bit tired of the same old crap being spouted about so-called “citizen journalism”. My main point is that if you are a journalist, just get on with it and be a friggin’ journalist.

Why on earth there exists the need for the word “citizen” and in among this whole CJ-ism “thang”, the new “buzzwords” (eh?) of “user-generated content”.

What takes the wind of me a bit in bafflement about this is that ordinary people have been submitting user-generated content to newspapers for decades. During the five years I spent on regional newspapers before working on London’s “Fleet Street”, more than 30 per cent of the copy I was involved with was generated by readers. And these people never needed a laptop/PC or an internet connection to contribute.

More importantly, they were effectively lobbying us local journalists to cover issues they were interested in. They didn’t get paid and they never asked to be paid. Mind you, if they had asked to be paid - I doubt they’d have received a penny.

I earned more from car-washing in a year than I earned as a local newspaper journalist in three. There wasn’t the budget then and I doubt there is the budget now to pay.

And should anyone jump up and suggest people shouldn’t contribute if they don’t get paid - local papers could still survive without “user-generated content”.

That said - if you are a punter with a picture or newstory and it has a monetary value, I’d be the first to help you make money from it.

I’ll refrain from commenting on what that copy error means vis-a-vis this debate, as I’m completely on your side here. But let’s recognize that thorough editing is not the blogosphere’s strong point.

That, by the way, is something our financial blog network is trying to rectify.

But hey, I’m just a blogger. What would I know about being a “real” journalist, other than having once slaved away in MSM for (too) many years. But Spacey escaped, Master. Yes she did, escaped she did.

Next time I drop-by an event, I’ll be sure to ring-up a “real” editor at a “real” paper and ask ‘em if they can email me some of that Magical Credibility before I dare commence operation of my own brain/blog. Perhaps they can send talking points while they’re at it.

Think I’ll change the title of my blog to the Dobby Review.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with a dead-tree media journalist and talk about blogging.

At one point in our conversation, over coffee at a local wifi hotspot, she used the term citizen journalist. Up until that moment I had used that phrase freely in referring to myself and others. But when the question rolled out of her mouth, I experienced a reality shift and this is what I said to her.

People who use the term citizen journalist are wittingly or unwittingly encouraging the ghettoization of bloggers.

I used the example of a quote from one of my personal heroes, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who had a varied carrier that began with a very classical, Orthodox education and went on to include teaching at both the Reform and Conservative Jewish seminaries.

An interviewer once asked Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi, what kind of Jew are you?

To which Heschel replied, I am not a noun in search of an adjective. I am simply a Jew.

That is the way I feel about my status as a writer and a journalist. To be either I only need to write and journal. Those who seek to distance themselves from other journalists by attaching adjectives are engaging in a fallacious argument. There are no citizen journalists, there are only journalists.

B’shalom,

Jeff Hess

I have more trouble with the word “citizen” — at least ever since “public” journalism perverted adjectives associated with journalism. “Public” had spit to do with journalism and everything to do with singleminded crusading. Yes, nothing like being in the scene to improve your accuracy, perspective and usefulness.

This issue is so much navel-gazing, Jeff. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. It’s better to have these people preoccupied than out in the world where they can do real damage.

I can only assume - and I am more than happy to be corrected on this - that a lot (but not all) of people who call themselves citizen journalists feel somehow tainted by the simple tag of “journalist” or - worse still - feel that somehow so-called citizen journalism is a loftier enterprise than the hard, nail-dirtying graft [sic] of bog standard journalism.

H-m-m-m-m—-Okay!

This comes out of the kerfuffle over people gaming Yourhub by putting up press releases as if they were stories.

Which is different from “journalists” rewriting press releases to look if they were “legitimate” stories… how?

(Probably because “It’s Us Doing It”)

Likewise, citizen journalism could use, and will no doubt end up with, “ethics group conveners (or facilitators, or whatever)” like a Jay Rosen, who will create a space for considering the unique pressures and influences on more decentralized, hyperlocal journalism (see YourHub debate), and the interest in having a well-mediated space to think this through will sustain however much influence the market will bear.

Otherwise, says this print writer and also Christian pastor, it is way too much like the term “ecumenism” suddenly being jealously defended by groups like the WCC and NCC, who wanted everyone to come join them, but on their terms. Now broad, diverse groups are working together on both ideas and actions in common ministry, and calling it “ecumenical,” and the reaction from state councils of churches and some wider body reps is: “wait, you can’t call that ecumenical . . . we’re not at the table . . . and we don’t want to be either . . . come back here! Please . . .”

From a post on my site:

John Temple, editor of The Rocky Mountain News, has a furious tirade posted in the letters section at Romenesko.
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=11143

He’s got every right to be mad.

Howard Rothman of NewWest.com grossly misrepresented what YourHub.com does with his claim that it is becoming an easily manipulated bulletin board for politicos with hidden axes to grind.
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/topic/article/6537/C37/L37

But Temple was so busy chopping down the trees of Rothman’s idiocy, that he misses the forest. Whenever a legacy media organization innovates the way the Rocky has with YourHub.com, along come the journalistic purists to try to shoot the venture down as a betrayal of everything journalism stands for.

Their self-righteous fury ignores technical reality and subverts the very values they claim to hold dear. Worse, their unthinking journalistic fundamentalism undermines journalism itself.

You can read the rest here: http://www.inopinion.com/features/?itemid=365

Journalism

1 a : the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media b : the public press c : an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium
2 a : writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine b : writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation c : writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest

Maybe it’s not 2a, 2b, and not even 1c - but blogging definately qualifies under the three remaining definitions…

I think classic journalism has/will have a strong position and duty and standard to bear, and that some of the “ideals” wrapped into the dogma (said nicely) are what help keep democratic (cough) governments on their guard.

That said, they can have their part. I think the bloggers will just keep virally invading the “new” part of news, and the scoops that matter to the creative class (a la Richard Florida). The news covered in my neck of the woods by the Boston Herald has its loyal base. The rest of us read ours via the longer fringe parts of that tail of such note.

One could. And yet it’s so rare that anyone does. That might be a clue right there.

You write often about “The Conversation” of news. But a million people shouting is not a conversation at all. It’s just noise. Shouldn’t journalists try to cut through that noise a bit? There are still people who want a distillation of information, right? Surely most people don’t have the time to go through the blogs and decide which news is right for them. Surely most people don’t have RSS. And what do nearly all blogs link to? That’s right: mainstream media news. News written by - gasp - professional Journalists.

Why is this kerfuffle always framed in an either/or debate anyway? Why can’t it be “all”? There is room for all. Journalism snobbery is silly. But so is anti-journalism snobbery.

While ethics issues do come up — our journalists live in their neighborhoods and occasionally get involved in neighborhood issues, which raises the question of impartiality — we work through them. Just like reporters and editors work through ethics issues in other newsrooms.